My Missing Maternal Instinct
Newsweek · C · trust 26/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. “We only have room for one family member in the ambulance. Mom, are you coming with us?” the paramedics asked as they wheeled my 2-year-old on a stretcher into the ambulance. They were at our house in response to my frantic 911 call when I saw my child having a seizure in her crib, her fever spiking to 103 degrees.
I shook my head. “My husband can go with you,” I said with almost no hesitation.
The paramedic’s eyebrows shot up before his face returned to professional neutrality. I had just deviated from nature’s unwritten protocol. That a mother was supposed to be with her child at times of distress. The truth is, I had no faith in my parenting abilities. My husband had been the primary parent, in many ways both mother and father to our daughter so far. I was a mere bystander, not by choice, but by circumstances.
As the ambulance left, I grabbed my car keys and drove the 10 miles to the hospital’s emergency center. A place I could drive to on autopilot, my almost second home for the previous two years. The place where I endured endless rounds of chemotherapy, emergency room and clinic visits. The place where people routinely stopped to ask me for directions because I looked like I belonged there.
I wished then, more than anything else, I were going back there for myself, as a patient instead of a parent. I loved my child more than anything in the world; I just did not trust myself to be her best advocate.
After years of fertility treatments , when I was finally pregnant at 33, I felt the last missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle of my life had clicked into place. I had married my college sweetheart, we had opportunities to travel around the world, and my career was on the right trajectory.
When our daughter was born, I assumed, based on what I’d read in the online baby forums, that mothers have a natural instinct to know when babies need food and sleep, and that babies, in turn, come equipped with rooting and sucking reflexes and maternal preference. Soon, as we brought our beautiful baby girl home, I learned that instinct and competence were two different things.
We had a perfectly good bedroom upstairs, outfitted with a crib and almost all the paraphernalia Babies "R" Us brochures told us we must have. We eschewed all that in favor of undeniably poor sleeping arrangements, plonking ourselves in front of the fireplace: me on the leather couch, my husband in a recliner, and our child in a bassinet, at arm’s reach from both of us for 10 days. We were too afraid to embrace the new-baby normal, to go back to our bed, worried we might drift off to our pre-child ways and sleep in and starve her if we got too comfortable.
As we tinkered with the fireplace, wondering if it was too hot or too cold, our child seemed to stare back at us, despite her eyes still not knowing how to focus.
“You fools. Get it together. You are the adults. You’re supposed to know how this works.”
I felt guiltier than my husband did. As a mother, I was starting to fail already.
I rationalized that it may have been an older-parent thing, this overthinking. My paati (grandmother) had popped out eight children before she reached 34, the age I was then. I bet she didn’t have the time, resources or even the strength to consider alternative living arrangements, take Lamaze classes, or make notes in the margins of What to Expect When You’re Expecting . I doubt she imagined all the scenarios that could go wrong with her children.
Then, when our child was 3 months old and just as I was beginning to make sense of motherhood, it felt like the universe bumped my carefully crafted jigsaw puzzle, breaking it apart along its fault lines. Even before my stage IV cancer diagnosis was confirmed, she was on formula as my breastmilk was considered too toxic, thanks to the many contrast dye injections I’d received during CT and MRI scans while the medical community wrestled with the puzzle of what exactly was wrong with me. By the time I started on chemotherapy just after her six-month birthday, I wasn’t feeding her…or burping her, or bathing her, or changing her diapers much by that point. I had become a MINO—mother in name only.
Over the next few months, as we had our parents and a nanny help out with childcare, I did my best to do some mothering. I took our daughter out in the stroller for walks around the neighborhood whenever I had the energy, or wheeled her through the aisles at Target. I couldn't help but notice the lingering and pitying glances from other shoppers. Maybe they saw the scarf covering my bare scalp, my thinning eyebrows, my pale skin, and then looked down at the healthy baby in the stroller. It definitely didn’t fit. The world had gotten the order of things wrong.
While I felt comfortable deciding whether to dress her in a romper or a dress, and whether her hair needed a black or a blue bow, I left decisions of any consequence, such as what solid foods to start her on, how to treat a cold, or how to handle late-night terrors, to my husband, seemingly the only adult in the house. Cancer had pulled me away from the day-to-day work of parenting, but I suspected it exacerbated something already at play during my early days as a mother: a missing maternal instinct.
I felt guilty at pediatrician appointments when the nurses would ask specific questions about her sleep and diet, and I’d have to turn to my husband to answer. I soon convinced myself that maternal instinct was like a muscle that requires exercise; if you don’t use it often, you lose it. I spent the night sobbing over my theory.
When my child turned one, in a twist that surprised both my entire medical team and myself, my 14 rounds of chemotherapy seemed to work, and some semblance of normalcy returned to our lives. As she grew, I tentatively began to assert my mominess, like…
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